The potentialities of using mobile devices such as smartphones for teaching/learning purposes are huge. However, in some teaching areas its use is still residual. The use of mobile applications in the context of teaching PLC programming techniques is addressed in this work. The MIT App-Inventor II is deployed to develop mobile applications for learning purposes. An android based application entitled Time-Counts is proposed here, developed to support the teaching/learning process of timers. Preliminary results regarding its use by students are presented.

Current students and technologies demand using new learning/teaching techniques. The potentialities of using mobile devices such as smartphones for teaching/learning purposes are huge. However, in some teaching areas its use is still residual. The use of mobile applications in the context of teaching PLC programming techniques is addressed in this work. The MIT App-Inventor II is deployed to develop mobile applications for learning purposes. An android based application entitled Time-Counts is proposed here, developed to support the teaching/learning process of both Timers and Counters. Results regarding its use by students are presented.

Industry 4.0, based on digital technologies and automation, allowed processes to be digitally exploited before, during and after the actual process was built. One such technology is virtual reality, the exploration of which offers the industry numerous possibilities. It was with this factor in mind that I opted for this theme, motivated by the impact that this technological innovation already has and may still have in the processes, namely the possibility of improving them with the use of virtual commissioning. With virtual commissioning in mind, a baggage handling system from Santorini airport was used as a case study. This system is controlled by a logic controller and the virtual environment was created from Emulate3D software. The process chosen for this work was the departures area, which involves the route between check-in and dispatch to the plane, taken from the case study mentioned. From the use of virtual reality software and the analysis of the process controlled by logic controllers, it is possible to virtually commission the digital twin. A human-machine interface was also developed to bring the model closer to the real one and to facilitate the commissioning. Creating a digital twin of the system, based on the technical drawings, allowed a virtual model very close to the real system. This enables virtual commissioning, which leads to the discovery of automation code problems and facilitates actual commissioning at the end of the process, as it eliminates much of the delays and costs of this phase, which are considered two key factors in the industry.